Thai Telecom Watchdog!

LTE - Long Term Evolution

Below are the various resources that were found in the internet.

• LTE World Summit
• Motorola LTE
• Ericsson LTE
• Huawei
• 3GPP LTE

This list will grow as new links are found on the Internet.

In the mobile communication industry, there are more than a few acronyms floating around. One of the most common is the G’s. The First Generation cellular network or 1G is an all analog network. Later when there are some needs for data, the Second Generation or 2G network was created. Later on, 2.5G was created to support even more and more data bandwidth. Now most country are on Third Generation network, or simply 3G.

Below table shows the type of technology and approximate time that it was deployed

I feel sorry for the state of Thailand telecommunication  industry. 3G have been deploy in other developed country for sometime. Thai operators are ready to deploy, but why are they delaying or doing small scale? (See here AIS scales back on 3G network plans, and here DTAC to postpone Thai 3G rollout)

I think one of the reason is this, the so called 3G license issued by NTC to the operators is through existing frequency which belong to CAT or TOT. But for some reason, holding the new freqency, 2.1GHz to be issue at a later time.

Why would any private companies (AIS, DTAC, etc …) want to pay consession to another private companies (CAT, TOT) for freqency usage that belong to Thai people. Consession fee should go directly to NTC and national treasury, not to private companies.

If NTC want to truely advance the telecommunication in Thailand, the licensing consideration should be un-bias. Private company or the so called privatized state enterprise should be left to compete on equal term. The performance of the company will determine who give service best to the Thai people who will ultimately win. Those companies who do not performed should not be held up by our tax money which burnt up in smoke years after years.

NTC recently held a few focus groups (ทช 3100/ว 4717) for citizen involvement in 3G licensing and their consultant firm hinting that 3G license on 2.1GHz would be issue sometime in Q3 2009. Although this is a good progress, it does not finalized when or how the license will be issue, if it truely will be in Q3. After the focus group, private companies soon made the announcement to delay 3G deployment on freqency that belong to other existing private companies.

When we, the Thai people, will have a clear plan for our telecommunication future and able to use 3G on our new iPhone! This I demand.

Just think how competitive the Thailand’s mobile market would be if you, the consumer, can take your mobile number and move to a new operator if that operator can not satisfied your high standard of service quality. This reality could be coming soon, if NTC decide to pass the Mobile Number Portability bill. MNP is not seen mainly for the consumer alone. It will create additional services where smaller or small value added service provider can fill in the services gap that big operator are missing. Benefits

• Increase competition and quality - no doubt if your network is in poor maintained and low quality, the users will take their number and vacate your network.
• Lower service cost - again, more competition mean lower cost to the consumer.
• Introduce new value added service to the market - New service option always mean someone will think of a clever way to pocket your money and give you values in return.

In summary, MNP will drives up competition and quality of service that operators need to provide in order to keep the consumer in their networks. Key point in #2, poor quality in Thailand does not mean consumer can just leave the network. The mobile numbers are allocated a given range of number to be provided to the consumer. Without puling these number back into the NTC ownership, MNP would be hard to justify.